Another Sleepless Night
by RebbieChan
Summary: "It's like everyday is a battle against time and I always lose." What was Robin losing?


"_It's like each day is a battle against time and I always lose" - Robin_

**Another Sleepless Night**

"And I always lose."

_What am I losing? _Robin lay wide awake. Another sleepless night. She stared up at the ceiling, thinking. Her mind would never stop when she wished it would. Maybe there was something more to it, perhaps there was something wrong that needed to be fixed?

She sighed and rolled over onto her side, pulling her thin white sheet with her. Robin stared at the wall, wondering what time it was. _It was two when I got into bed…_

What was she losing? Robin closed her eyes, trying to shut out her thoughts. _Sleep, that's for sure._ Her mind formed images of hands reaching out towards her, trying to take her. She buried her face in her pillow.

"Always lose" held such a negative connotation, it felt like it meant much more than having a busy day.

Her mind was elsewhere.

It wasn't that she didn't pay attention or didn't listen, it was that she couldn't. There had always been something else pulling at her and demanding her time. Reality could drift away altogether at that pulling. There was a need, a desire to hear those thoughts.

What if everything had been wrong? What if it had been for nothing?

Too much effort was poured into looking for people, people whom she would have to kill.

No sleep and a charred body. Her mind rattled with insecurities.

What she had been taught held such conflicting views.

Robin rolled over to her other side, keeping her eyes open this time. _What have I lost?_ It seemed like it should have been obvious to her, but it wasn't. There wasn't anything that seemed to fit or make sense. Something wasn't there, that much she knew. She felt empty, alone.

Even among a crowd or her coworkers, Robin was alone. Something wasn't right.

She closed her eyes again. _A battle against time…_ How much time did she have left…? How much before…? Images of fire and charred bodies of the past haunted her, called to her.

How much time before she would become one of them?

Could her whole life be lived out, at least a good sixty or eighty years? Or like most, would she suffer a young fate? Could she fit all of her years into such a small time?

The hands tried to examine her. They tried to see how much time was left, if she was worth keeping around or better off dead. Robin knew that there was nothing they could do to tell her, but she was dying to know.

Did she have to keep losing?

Did her mind have to continue to fail her?

No, it wasn't that she wasn't paying attention, there were simply more pressing matters at hand. Perhaps the woods called to her one night by the roadside. Perhaps the woods told her to play, to enjoy what little time was left. Perhaps the sea called her as she passed on a bridge. Perhaps they would call her to an early grave.

Maybe that would be for the better. To finally stop losing, to take control and win something, it sounded good at times. But all that she would be winning was death.

Robin lay on her stomach now, trying to think of other things. _Dojima wasn't at the office today, I wonder what she was up to?_ The lazy blonde probably was up to a lot of nothing. She probably went shopping or slept all day. Maybe Dojima had friends and met up with them.

There wasn't any time for friends.

Between her taxing job and keeping herself alive, she simply didn't have the time to meet people. Robin tried to tell herself that her coworkers were her friends. She tried, but couldn't make herself believe. She was a problem for them, a difficult child.

_Karasuma is always saying things like that._ That woman had a thing for rules and protocol, but she ever went to Solomon HQ…She would be glad to be a part of the unorganized STN-J.

Robin remembered what is was like to live and to work there. Every morning she would wake up at a certain time, eat at a certain time, received information at a certain time. There were specific time frames for each hunt, separate time blocks for research and investigation. Almost every hunt was done alone and almost every hunt was classified to all but the hunter carrying it out.

She hadn't been able to keep up.

At her assignment to Japan, Robin had known the real reason. She wasn't fit to be a Solomon Hunter. _I lost again._

Sakaki knew that feeling, probably more than any of the others. _He tries his hardest._ But she knew that trying didn't always lead to anything at all. Robin couldn't stop her mind from going places she wished it wouldn't go.

She was going to live all of her life compact it. Compact eighty years into thirty…or maybe twenty. What was left that she had to do? _I need to get married, have a family…_Did she have time for that? Robin hid her head under her sheet.

Could she be ready for that?

Robin kept her eyes open so that the things she was thinking wouldn't pollute her mind with images she did not want to see. Instead she her body, still that of a child's, hidden under that one thin sheet. No one would want that, at least those images made her feel desirable.

It felt wrong to have images of herself pressed up against a man flood her mind. She knew nothing of the act, and yet it followed her all the time. It was the last thing Robin wanted to think about, yet it almost always was the first to come up.

Who would it be? She thought of Amon and her face grew red and hot. _Not him._ But once the thought came, the thought stuck and she couldn't get him out of her head.

Why couldn't it have been Michael instead? He would be better for her, she knew that. She might actually have a chance.

Was Toko home? Robin couldn't remember. She hoped she was, if not then…_Is she with him?_

Should she check?

What would she say if she was there? What would she do if she wasn't? Robin lay on her stomach, deciding that it probably didn't matter.

Robin closed her eyes and thought about the case she was working on. Was the witch a girl? A boy? She wondered most of all whether they had trouble sleeping as much as she did.

_I need to find a hobby._ Something fun to do every once in a while would be nice. But she became bored of reading, the television hurt her eyes, and she wasn't one for sports.

Robin groaned, annoyed that she was sill awake and threw her pillow over her head.

How much force would in take to suffocate under the feathers?

She rolled on her side again, hugging the pillow in her arms.

_How many hours left?_

Couldn't it just be morning?

What was there to look forward to on the next day anyway? It was all the same.

She rolled to her other side, the pillow now between her legs. Still sleep would not come.

Robin counted sheep. _How does that help any?_

_What am I losing?_ She sighed, and finally decided to think on it.

The sun began to rise.

_My will and my sanity._

Another sleepless night.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **I think the quote is episode 6 or 7. It's one of my favorite quotes ever, and so I was looking at it and decided to write on it. Robin doesn't seem to sleep much, many theories are that she's a bit of an insomniac. And so, here it is, Robin the insomniac. She sure has enough to lose sleep over.

**Thanks for reading/reviewing! Much love!  
><strong>


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